Mother's Day, Methodist style

Mother's Day, Methodist style

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Methodists Ann Jarvis and her daughter, Anna, are credited with founding a movement that later became the nationally recognized Mother's Day Courtesy of Historic St. George's UMC, Philadelphia.
Statistics suggest that $20.7 billion will be spent on moms in honor of the U.S. holiday that falls on the second Sunday in May: Mother's Day. All that cash and commercialism goes against everything the women who originated the idea wanted.

In the late 1860s, before there was an official Mother’s Day holiday in the U.S., a Methodist mom named Ann Reeves Jarvis organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” at which mothers gathered with former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation. Her daughter, Anna, is credited with pushing for a national holiday, which was formally established by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.

UMC.org asked Harriet Olson, the current head of United Methodist Women, and Donna Miller, archivist at Historic St. George’s United Methodist Church, to tell us more about the women behind the holiday.

In this video from United Methodist Communications, meet the Methodist mother and daughter team who worked to create a day to honor a mother's love and to emphasize how important a mother's role is in building a peaceful world.